Umm, wow, ugly rock. Reface with limestone or tile and it can be gorgeous!!

It is interesting! Add a Rustic beefy mantle and accessorize it! Then, stain that stair rail darker, or, paint it. You can make this a nice statement rather than treating it like an albatross.... It won't look like everyone else's, it will be yours. Use your imagination!

I would paint walls darker tan, use rustoleum cabinet transformations expresso for trim and put a larger darker mantle with a large mirror over fireplace.

Ah, the California rock fireplace. Some of the rocks look a bit unusual in having both light and dark patches. Limestone used on fireplaces doesn't usually do that, IME. Do the dark parts run all the way through the rock? If you can safely chip off a piece the size of a matchhead in some unobtrusive location, are the innards light or dark?

Also, have you lived with it for a while? Do you like it, hate it, or just shrug when you look at it?

i actually think it's interesting! It might bother you now because there's too much contrast with white walls and light stain on the railing. I'd paint the walls with cream or tan or greyish brown color and make the railing dark rich brown so that everything comes together. As to the mantel i'd remove it.

we have not moved in yet, so haven't lived with it yet... whole house will be big project... thinking of lightening grout, new mantle new hw floors... either that or take out and start over...

Is it a Lindal Cedar home by any chance? I used to live in one.
It would be greatly improved, as decormonkey said, by painting the walls darker. I would paint the wall on which the chimney is visible (all the way up), a dark warm grey. Other walls can be lighter, but not pure white.

A larger mantel would make huge difference. I would make the mantel thick and much darker. I actually like the rock lol

I would also put it a little higher (the mantle)

no not lindal home but I can see a lot of elements in it like that...

Yep, your stone has gorgeous camel and caramel and gray tones that are neutral and can be worked with. It is a hidden gem that wasn't featured properly in their paint job. I see camel toned sw macadamia walls, a big beefy sandblasted or hand planed timber mantle hung over the existing one. Then you can go in nearly any color direction you want with decor, though using some gray in accents would be best. If you want a modern, traditional or very transitional result, you can get it with this fireplace w/out cladding it.

Light grout will just make the grout pop which you don't want, and overgrouting isn't really going to produce a european look here but you could bring the gray up a shade or two and get an overall lighter look that will help. Lose the glass doors or paint out the brass on them with high heat paint if you feel you need them for safety reasons.

The stone is beautiful and real, and its scale is beefy and contemporary enough that covering it with a more modern stone tile application (a much less expensive material) will make it even more sleek and modern - that is the only reason to clad it - if your style is severely contemporary and you hate the stone. I think you would lose a lot of character and realize that whatever you select will be carried all the way up through the house. Fill the storage area with perfectly split logs that you never use for a fire - paint the inner fire box black and "work it" !

The stone really dominates, doesn't it? But it will be stunning when you are done. I had a similar, though less imposing, one here in Australia. I spent a whole day giving mine a good scrub before I did anything else. A LOT of old smoke came off mine. MANY changes of water lol. But it made a huge difference. Then warmer tones of grey and some brown/charcoal will the trick. A couple of big southwest-patterned floor cushions will distract ;)

Wow! That's a lot of rock! Fireplaces similar to this, are by far the most common "Design Dilemmas" on Houzz.

The rock is much more attractive than some, but it really puts you in the postion of whether you are going to make it your decorating focus, or do some significant demo, or encasing it, etc.

I was in a live-in relationship several years ago, and my boyfreind's house was a 1970's NW contemporary split level, with a fake boulder firplace that went all the way up to the top of about a 15 " ceiling.. To make matters worse, it had been painted white.

We had talked about removing it, and one Sunday I couldn't stand it anymore, and my boyfriend got a crowbar, and ripped it all off the wall. We had it replace with a substantial white mantal, and travertine marble. It looked fantastic.

I don't know if those builders were able to have any vision of the future, and see what a problem these would be.

There was another fireplace here that I did a little drawing of. I also have the before picture.

This fireplace is not a monolith, like yours, and I don't know if your firplace would accommodate anything similar to this.

I felt if you could balance the stone, with the usual tiny fireplace bed, by adding tile, and an updated surround, it could look quite nice.

After looking at so many of these tyoes of fireplaces, I wonder if in some cases, a mantle almost makes them look worse, especially if there is an elevated hearth.

When people have a mantel, they then have the dilemma of having to fill it up.
With such a busy canvas with the stone, the mantles often end up looking cluttered. Especially with a large hearth, that usually ends up having accessories

And when the stone goes all the way to the ceiling, I've seen mantels that make the design look bottom heavy, and out of balance.

If you look at the before and after in the examples, I think the hearth was one of the factors in the stone looking so oppressive, when you look at the after. Then the terribly out of proportion, sort of an afterthougtht mantel. combinded with the tiny firebox, it was terrible.

I used tile to balance out the stone, and make the box more proportionate, and then added marble to the hearth, and an industrial stainless look to the front of the hearth.

This look may not entirely work for you, with the wood storage space being a factor, but if you could update the firebox with a modern surround, remove the mantel, and maybe add some succlents, as elpelicano suggested, and a LARGE fantastic modern painting, instead of a mantel, it might be really cool. Or without the plants...................But that has a current, but interesting Frank Lloyd Wright vibe to it.

If you look at one of all those beautiful fireplace examples, the stone with the beefy mantel and hearth, the stone is more one color, and larger pieces, so it isn't such a busy background, and more of a neutral canvas, that accommodates accessories.

As I said, I guess you would have to spend a lot of money completely changing it, or decide to find a way to live with it.

You may be able to figure out something really unique. Thank you for letting us share comments on your lovely home!

Altering that would be expensive and disruptive, so see if you can domesticate it before you bring in the dynamite.

What libradesigneye said! Especially about filling the niche with perfectly split wood you never mess with. Or a large art piece.

It looks dark and dingy now because the rest of the house is so pale. Clean it, and use colors from the rocks for wall and floor coverings. It may clean up real nice. If it looks better wet (check while you are scrubbing it, use a matte-finish stone sealant.

You could use almost any style furniture except maybe French Rococo or Hollywood Regency, although they could work if you considered it the "accent" like a Chinese laquer piece in an ultra-modern setting. Rustic modern would be the easiest to work with, and any of the styles on the casual side of their parental style would do nicely.

Whatever the style, it needs furniture with a solid feel, not wimbly little stuff.

Remove the dated insert and it will look completely different.

I would get a nice insert, and paint the room to complement the natural stone. A large mantel would not hurt either.

I'm guessing you can't eliminate the mantel, but a larger, hand-hewn one would look better, I would paint and replace the carpet, and then I could totally see this room filled with MCM furniture.

Just resurface with a cleaner, modern natural stone. images are of a few suggestions from our line that might be of interest. Strip cladding is very claen and subtle, while the wedge tiles in Rustic cladding or Vtile are more pronounced

My grandparents had a fireplace exactly like that in the San Fernando Valley in the 70's. good memories! That said, I'd demo and put up a flat stone material that matches your home's decor and your design aesthetic.

giaksch, you crack me up! Ahhh, the fond memories of my grandparents and their fireplace just like it..........................Dynamite the sucker! :) Pragmatic! I like it!